


Winter Cleaning

by cherrycoloredphoenix



Series: Death City Shenanigans [1]
Category: Soul Eater
Genre: Basically, Gen, House Cleaning, Platonic Soulmates, Queerplatonic Relationships, Slice of Life, but I wrote it as platonic so yep, if you want to read this as romantic I mean go ahead I'm not going to fight you, they're in a qpr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-19
Updated: 2017-10-19
Packaged: 2019-01-18 22:35:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12397632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherrycoloredphoenix/pseuds/cherrycoloredphoenix
Summary: It's spring cleaning, but in summer. It's interesting what you can find under the bed sometimes when it hasn't been cleaned in a while.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My personal headcanon universe that I’ll be basing my writing on combines parts of the manga and anime. Namely, because I like happy endings, it’s basically the anime plot and ending (with choice manga elements here and there), but Soul is a Death Scythe and Kid encourages Lord Death to broker a peace deal with the Witches, etc. Best of both worlds and all that.
> 
> I might explain that further in another work, but for now, that’s all you need to know I think! This fic is set after the ending of the series. Please enjoy!

“Soul, we need to clean this place out.”

“Huh?”

Soul cracked an eye open to see his partner bent over him, her pigtails swinging into his face. She wore a determined expression.

“The place is a mess. We should really get it cleaned up.”

He looked around with his solitary open eye at their apartment. It wasn’t exactly sterile, sure, but he wouldn’t call it _sloppy_. Though, now that he was looking, that was definitely a pair of dirty socks draped over one of the kitchen chairs, and the books and unopened mail piled on the coffee table were starting to fall over. He sighed. “I guess.”

“Great. Get up and help me.”

“What?” Both eyes opened wide. “Right now?” It was the middle of summer and it was _hot_. Besides, he’d been dozing, and the last thing he wanted to do right now was move.

“ _Yes_. Get off the couch, we’ll need to clean that too.” She tugged at his sleeve. “Up.”

“Wait –”

Maka hauled him up by his arm, reminding him yet again that she was a lot stronger than her scrawny appearance suggested.

“It’s about time this place had a thorough tidy-up,” she announced. “Think of it as spring cleaning.”

He groaned, stretching his arms out and rubbing a hand over his face. “You missed it by several months.”

“Well, we’re getting a head start for next year then.” She handed him a sheet of paper. He took it automatically and stared down at it, unable to process it for a moment. It was a list of things to do. It looked far too long to him.

“You _planned_ for this?” he complained. Her cheeky grin was all the answer he needed. “Only you would do that for _cleaning_.”

She waved a second piece of paper in his face. “Don’t get grumpy,” she scolded. “I have a list too. It’s longer than yours anyways – I knew you wouldn’t be excited about it.”

“Only you’d be excited about something like this.”

At that, she pursed her lips. “I’m not _excited_ about it, but it’s necessary. And the apartment will look so nice afterwards! Anyways, let’s get started. It’s not like you had plans for today anyways, did you?”

He was forced to admit that he did not.

“Exactly. Off you go.”

“What about Blair? Doesn’t she have to do anything?” he protested.

“Well, yeah, but she’s not here right now.” Maka shrugged. “She can help when she gets back.”

Soul sighed. “Cleaning isn’t cool at all.”

“Hush now.”

 

Item 1: Clean the general areas.

This meant the entryway, kitchen, and living room. They worked together on this, Soul systematically picking up and throwing out trash that he picked up while Maka went over all the surfaces with a wet cloth to catch the dust. It was more bearable when he set up his speakers to play music for them. Maka didn’t complain.

After the trash was removed and the floor was vacuumed, she insisted on purging the fridge of all its uneaten food, and even Soul had to admit that that was a good idea. They found a months-old dish of ravioli at the very back. Both of them gagged at the sight.

“I’ll throw it out,” he said through a pinched nose.

Maka just coughed, nodded, and went back to digging through the freezer drawers.

Later, he came back from removing another full trash bag to find his meister staring up at the ceiling, hands on her hips. She turned to him as he approached.

“Hey, Soul,” she said. “Turn into a scythe?”

“What?” He frowned. “Why?”

“I can’t reach the cobwebs up there, and we don’t have a long enough duster.” She pointed into the corner of the ceiling, and Soul followed her finger. Sure enough, there was a tangle of dusty spiderwebs. He recoiled.

“ _What?_ That’s disgusting!”

“They’re just spiderwebs! Just this once?” She clasped her hands in mock prayer.

He shuddered. “Fine, fine.” At least he wouldn’t be able to feel it. He transformed and bore the task, but not without complaining about it. “You do remember I’m a Death Scythe, right? This is definitely not cool.”

Maka laughed as she wiped off the end of his handle with tissue to get the last of the webs off. “It’s not that bad! Hold on –” He’d partially transformed back towards human. “There’re a few more places we need to get. We might as well get all of them at once.”

He grumbled but obliged. Maka poked the end of the scythe’s staff into all the corners, scraping awkwardly at the clumps of webs to dislodge them. When Soul finally transformed back, he was covered in a fine later of dust. He sneezed, and Maka handed him a tissue.

“Damn,” she said, looking at the small pile of cobwebby tissues in the trashcan. “We really haven’t cleaned in a while. I wasn’t expecting so many.”

“Yeah,” he grumbled, brushing himself off. “At least that’s done now.”

 

Item 3: Sort the mail.

Soul settled himself by the coffee table. He was on the rug, because Maka was aggressively cleaning under and behind the couch cushions. She’d already found about ten dollars’ worth of spare change.

“Spam. Spam. Spam. Magazine – you still have a subscription to this?” He held up a creased issue of _Meisters and Weapons Worldwide._ “This stuff is boring as hell. If the _school_ was giving us a subscription it’s definitely useless.”

She paused in her digging to toss two more quarters onto the small pile of money she was amassing, along with a plastic cupcake ring shaped like a pumpkin and a movie ticket stub. How did that much stuff even get down there?

“It’s boring but it covers all the important stuff around the world that we need to know. Have you even read it before?”

“’Course I have. And then I realized that there’s a reason we have a bulletin board in the main hall for the students.”

“The board’s only for mission announcements and pre-Kishin warnings, not any other news. Like did you know two weeks ago there was a wave of pre-Kishin attacks in London, but some local family had two kids who turned out to a meister and weapon respectively who actually managed to take almost all of them out? With no training, either. They hadn’t known they could do that and they didn’t know anything about resonating souls at all. Some local pair stepped in at the end but that’s pretty interesting, isn’t it? My papa said they’ve been invited to the DWMA on a scholarship, to see if they’d be willing to stay and learn.”

Soul shrugged, setting the magazine aside. “It’s interesting but I wouldn’t say it’s _important_.”

“Why do you say that?”

“It doesn’t really affect us personally, does it?” He tossed a stack of advertisements and coupons into the trash pile. “I hope Black*Star doesn’t try to challenge them to a fight when they show up. He’s never outgrown that habit.” He grinned, pointed teeth gleaming. “Hey, maybe we can greet them when they arrive. A little freshmen hassling.”

She tossed one of the letters on the table at his face. “I think that’s called hazing, and we shouldn’t do that.”

He picked up the fallen letter and glanced at it. “All right, all right. You’re no fun. This is the water bill, by the way.” He transformed a finger into a tiny scythe and slit it open neatly, pulling out the bill. His eyes widened as he scanned it. “Blair’s costing us a lot on hot water…”

Maka laughed. “Of course she is. At least we’re not paying.” Her voice trailed off and she turned back to the couch, thumping a cushion vigorously against the arm to free the dust.

Soul looked up at her, eyebrows creasing. Her back was to him, but he wondered what she was thinking. Maka’s relationship with her father had made great strides since Asura’s defeat, but Soul thought that her relationship with her mother seemed to be strained lately. Not necessarily because Spirit and Maka were on better terms, but because compared with Spirit’s eagerness to be involved in his no-longer-estranged daughter’s life, her mother’s habit of only sending a postcard now and then during her world travels was starting to look a bit bad. It had been almost a year since Maka had seen her mother in person, and while all their bills were generally forwarded to her (the apartment was in their names and they afforded rent on a scholarship, but her mother had offered sometime during her divorce process to handle the bills), that was about the only interaction Maka had with her anymore.

Heaving a sigh, Maka plopped one of the cushions back onto the couch and headed for the kitchen.

“Hey, where’re you going?” Soul complained. “How come you get to quit?”

“It’s my turn to cook dinner!” she called over her shoulder. “Wait a bit, I’ll bring you food.”

He settled back with a grateful smile.


	2. Chapter 2

Item 7: Clean out your own room

The next day, Soul woke up to sharp rapping on his bedroom door. He rolled over and groaned, covering his eyes. He’d forgotten to draw the curtains again last night, so the summer sunlight streamed in and stabbed at his brain.

Outside, Maka heard her partner’s groans through the door, and hid a smile. She could _feel_ his grumbling – his soul wavelength was cranky and snappy. “I have pancakes for you!” she called, hefting the plate in her hand. More groans. “Come on, they’re getting cold. And if we finish today we can go out with the others. They suggested a movie trip.”

The door swung open. Soul stood there with a bad case of bedhead and squinted eyes. Maka reached out and tugged on a stray lock of hair playfully. He scowled and reached for the platter of pancakes, but she moved it out of his reach.

“Get dressed properly, and then you can have some,” she said. “We don’t have that much to get done today.”

The door shut again, and Maka went to put the plate down on the kitchen table. She heard her partner shuffle out of his room, and the bathroom door shut. The boy’s need and ability to gel his hair into shape even when grouchy and sleepy was impressive sometimes. Maka herself still had her hair loose and was wrapped in a light bathrobe.

Soul slunk into the kitchen several minutes later, looking much more responsive. He then proceeded to inhale two plates of pancakes and an entire mug of practically-boiling coffee. Maka, sitting across from him, winced on his behalf as he poured the steaming liquid down his throat.

“Doesn’t that hurt?” she asked around a mouthful of syrup and pancake.

“Not really,” he said, licking his lips with a grin. “What’s on the schedule for today again?”

Maka shoveled food into her mouth with one hand while checking her list with the other.

“Cleaning our rooms,” she said, “cleaning the bathroom, and finishing up vacuuming and dusting everything. And then get the laundry in, but that’s about it.”

“Awesome. Seriously, is Blair ever going to help?”

There was a meow from the hallway, and Soul twisted around to see Blair pad out of her room, looking pleased with herself.

“Of course I’m helping,” she said, tail flirting cheekily. “I’ve already cleaned out my own room.” She looked smug, if a cat could even be said to look smug.

“She’s got a leg up on you,” Maka remarked, finishing the last of her food.

“She has magic,” Soul protested.

Blair twitched her ears and pranced off towards the door. “I’m off, Maka!” she called over her shoulder.

“Huh? Where to?”

“Work at the Chupacabra doesn’t stop on weekends, you know!” The cat transformed in a poof of smoke into her human form, pointed hat and all. “See you kids tonight!”

“But – weren’t you going to help?” Maka protested weakly, a hand half stretched out as if to keep the cat in the apartment.

“I did!” Blair beamed and whisked the door open. “I cleaned my own room, didn’t I? Bye bye!” And she was gone.

Maka sighed and let her hand drop. “I guess it’s good that she even did that. Oh well, then.” She stood and started to gather dishes, but Soul reached out to stop her.

“I’ll do them,” he offered. “Go… get ready for the day, or whatever.” He tried to pass it off as a careless comment, but Maka smiled.

“Thanks, Soul,” she said warmly. “I appreciate it.”

He shrugged, but grinned back.

 

As it turned out, clearing out their respective rooms of unnecessary items was a rather daunting task.

Maka actually wasn’t making much headway – she kept getting sidetracked by memories and nostalgia from the things she found. She pulled old, dusty textbooks out from the depths of her closet from literal years ago, from her very first classes at the DWMA. “I thought I’d sold some of these,” she mumbled, flipping through the wrinkled pages.

“Yeah, right,” Soul scoffed from his room “I remember that bazaar. We sold _two_ books because you kept scaring people off with your face.”

Maka threw a rolled-up sock at him, missing completely. He ducked instinctively, laughing, and threw it back. His aim was better, and he hit her in the shoulder.

She found crumpled pages of essays and school assignments, and some notebooks filled with notes from classes she still vividly remembered.

 _This was from before Sid was a zombie,_ she thought, looking pensively through an essay. _That seems so long ago now._

 

Across the hall, Soul was actually making more headway against the clutter in his room than his partner. He had sorted everything into piles: trash, music equipment, music records and disks, dirty clothes, and everything else.

He’d started from under his bed, rather than the closet like Maka had. While pulling a box of old school supplies out, he noticed something glowing reddish, way back against the wall. Frowning, he reached as far as he could and grabbed it. His eyes widened in surprise when he realized what it was, and started laughing.

“Maka! I found an actual Kishin egg!”

She came barreling from her room at the first mention of a Kishin, looking completely ready to slaughter any monster that had dared to invade her home with her bare hands. She stopped in her tracks and stared blankly at the glowing red orb caught in Soul’s fist.

“What?”

Soul waved it at her. “I found it under my bed. Not sure how it got there, but hey.” He brushed at it with his other hand to get off any residual dust, then tipped his head back and opened his mouth.

“Wait!”

He froze and lowered the soul. “What?”

“Are you seriously going to _eat_ that?” She looked disgusted. “It’s been under your bed for how long? We don’t even know how it got there!”

He looked at the soul again, then shrugged. “So? A soul’s a soul, isn’t it?” Before Maka could respond, he shoved it into his mouth and swallowed. It felt just like any other soul, sliding smoothly down his throat. “Mmm, that’s nice.” He cracked a grin at Maka. “Haven’t eaten one in a while.”

She shuddered. “If you feel sick or anything, I’ll take you to Stein or someone. That can’t be hygienic.”

“Hey, I’ll be fine, I’m a Death Scythe. Souls can’t give you food poisoning, anyways.”

“Being a Death Scythe doesn’t mean you can’t get sick. Leave it to you to be the first to die of _soul_ poisoning,” she muttered, but then shook her head and chuckled. “God, I love you, but you’re an idiot.”

His grin widened. “Appreciate the sentiment.”

 

Maka was carrying her box of things to be discarded out to the living room when she noticed Soul sitting silently in the middle of his piles. Some envelopes and pieces of paper were lying in front of him. He seemed to be reading one of them. His soul wavelength felt discordant and confused.

“Soul?” she asked gently, stopping in his doorway. He looked up, eyebrows drawn down in a frown.

“Yeah?”

She paused at the look on his face, and, seeming to realize this, he quickly changed his expression to his customary disinterested appearance. She glanced at the paper in his hand, and he looked down, following her eyes.

“Oh,” he mumbled. “It’s just… it’s nothing.”

She shifted the box to her hip. “We’ve had this conversation before, Soul,” she reminded him gently. “You can talk to me.”

He sighed. “It’s really nothing. Just some letters from my family, from years ago.” His voice was quiet and bitter. Maka set the box down and approached him, sinking down to sit by him. He turned a letter over in his hand. “Right after they found out where I was. Trying to get me to go back and all that. This was… before we met, actually. I never answered any of them.” He dropped the paper. It settled on top of the others with a soft sound. “I didn’t realize I’d kept them.”

Maka stared down at the pile of papers. She’d always been careful around this topic. She didn’t have Soul’s bluntness when it came to talking to other people about their families. _Like mine, for instance_ , she thought with a touch of irony. _I wish I could help, but I’m not sure how_.

“Do you want to throw them out?” she asked after a moment.

Soul picked up another envelope, this one unopened. He stared at the address line for a long time, then dropped it as well. “Sure.”

“Here,” and Maka reached for her box. “Put them in this if you like.”

He did so, and she stood up again. He stayed sitting, staring at the piles around him. He tossed another CD case onto his music pile.

“It’s been, what, five years?” Maka asked, still in his doorway. He gave a grunt of affirmation. “Have you ever… have you ever thought about going back, just to visit?”

His head snapped up. “Of course not,” he said, as if the answer was obvious. Maka hesitated, surprised that she felt… well, surprised. He continued. “My life here has been better than anything they could ever offer me. You’re the best partner I could ever want, and…” He broke off and ran a hand through his hair, pushing his headband back. “Hell, I don’t know. I just know I don’t want to go back to that life.” He exhaled and picked up a pair of pants from his laundry pile to keep his hands doing something.

Maka’s gaze fell to his chest. There was a scar there still – there would always be a scar there. Very softly, she said, “Even after all the times you almost died?”

At that, he shot to his feet, forcing her to look him in the face. “How often are we going to have to go over that?” he demanded. He wasn’t shouting, but his soul wavelength was agitated. “God, Maka – we’ve covered this. Over and over.” He stopped and ran both hands through his hair again, then let out a sigh. “Yeah. Even that. C’mon, Maka.” He reached out and took her by the shoulders. “You know me. I know you. Fighting with you was – is – always going to be the best experience I’ve ever had.”

She almost laughed, and dropped her gaze for a moment before looking up again. “Yeah,” she said. “Me too.” She grinned, and Soul’s face broke into one of his shark-toothed smiles.

“That doesn’t even make sense,” he said, reaching out and ruffling her bangs. She stuck her tongue out at him again, and he laughed out loud. “You’re as immature as ever.”

“You know it’s endearing.”

He rolled his eyes, still smiling. “Keep telling yourself that.”

They both cracked up, the moment of tension passing. He ruffled her hair one more time and then all but pushed her out of the room with her box.

“I still have to get this stuff cleaned out like _you_ want me to, stop distracting me!”

“I’m going, I’m going!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this version Crona’s moved into their own place. They’re neighbors to Maka and Soul but don’t technically live with them. That’s why they aren’t here to help the kiddos with their cleaning


	3. Chapter 3

Item 10: Clean the bathroom and do the laundry

“Your hair gel takes up most of the space in here,” Maka noted, opening the medicine cabinet. She yelped as a few products tumbled off their shelves, and Soul reached over to help put them back. “I guess we can leave it for now, though. I’ll clean the toilet, you can take the towels and put them in the laundry machine.”

His job was done quickly, but he idled by the washer for about twenty minutes, browsing on his phone and feeling the rumble of the machine under his elbows. He rarely checked his friends’ social media feeds, because they tended to spend so much time together anyways, and no one ever posted anything during school hours (not that they hadn’t tried, but Stein had an eagle eye and like to read chat histories out loud to the class if he caught you). Still, it was interesting to scroll through every now and then.

Black*Star’s account was full of blurry selfies and callouts of people who’d challenged him to duels (or gloating when he inevitably beat them – seriously, the people who challenged the _warrior god_ were bigger idiots than even Black*Star was sometimes). Kid’s was neat, organized, and professional – since his Lines of Sanzu had temporarily connected, he’d been helping his father out with running Death City a lot more, and usually just posted updates on situations or managed the social media pages to let students know the goings-on at school (Lord Death usually joked that he was _far_ too old to start using such fancy technology, but Kid had confided that his father had a few private accounts, though he refused to reveal them even when the others begged him for the names). Tsubaki’s accounts were largely just to check up on her friends, Maka mostly posted scenic photos and ranted about her studying, and Patty’s posts were even less coherent as Black*Star’s. Liz’s accounts were actually pretty entertaining, Soul had to admit – she had a small following among the DWMA because she made memes and “relatable posts” about life as a weapon.

And while he’d never admit it, Soul had tracked down his older brother’s social media accounts as well and checked in on them every now and then. Not that he had closely followed anything of Wes’s, but it was his only way of seeing what the oldest Evans brother was up to nowadays. He wondered sometimes if Wes ever thought about him anymore, but he always shrugged it off.

Now, though, he tapped through Wes’s page, just to see where his ultra-successful brother was traveling next. Though, all things considered, Soul had probably visited more places than him, just from five years of DWMA missions. He allowed himself a brief moment to wonder how Wes – how his entire family – would react to the news of him becoming a Death Scythe. Little Soul Evans, always second-best to his brother, was one of the most powerful weapons in the world. The Last Death Scythe, no less. Wes would probably be proud of him, at least. He was always kinder than Soul thought he deserved.

He half-smiled at the thought.

“I figured you’d holed up here. Step out and have something to eat.”

He looked up from his phone, startled. Maka stood in the doorway, holding two cups of juice with dew condensing on the glass. She smiled at him and lifted one in a sort of toast. “We’re almost done! We might as well celebrate. Crona just stopped by with fresh cookies. Go on out and eat, and once we put the rest of the laundry in we’ll be all done.”

Soul accepted the glass she handed him and sipped. It was sweet and cold, and perfect for the hot day.

“You’re seriously the best partner ever,” he said, holding out his cup to clink against hers. “I’ve told you that, right?”

“Plenty of times,” she assured him, smiling wider. “See, cleaning up wasn’t that bad, was it?”

He snorted a laugh and took another sip to hide his grin. “Don’t push it.”

 

Crona’s cookies were amazing, as usual. Maka and Soul sat companionably at the kitchen table, divided the pile exactly down the middle (splitting one cookie in half to make sure both got the same amount), and spent a quiet, peaceful twenty minutes sipping their drinks and eating.

Maka’s phone went off in the silence, and she checked the caller ID before picking up. Soul half-listened to the conversation, absorbed in the depths of an online discussion thread headed by Kid about the merits of pushing back school start times in the mornings.

“Hey Liz! No… oh, of course, I almost forgot! Yes, yes, of course. Where should we… okay! Yeah, see you and the others soon.”

Soul raised an eyebrow at her as she hung up, silently questioning. She popped the last bit of a cookie into her mouth and swallowed it down with juice.

“Remember I said the others said we could go out today? They’re suggesting we meet them in half an hour at the corner and we’ll make decisions there.”

“I’m not opposed,” he said, draining his glass. “Come on; help me sort the laundry.”

They ended up sitting facing each other on the laundry room floor, sorting through the piles of dirty laundry. Soul’s pile was somewhat larger, so when Maka finished hers she started on his as well, teasing him incessantly about his inability to do his laundry on time.

“On time?” he spluttered. “Since when did laundry have a due date?”

“It doesn’t, but when you let it pile up –”

“Oh, come on, it’s not that bad –”

They bundled the first load into the machine, still bickering lightly, until they both noticed the time.

“Shit! We’ll be late!” Maka ran into her room to change. Soul grabbed his jacket and waited by the door, taking the opportunity to nab a few leftover cookies from Maka’s plate.

“Let’s go,” she said, bouncing back and immediately noticing his theft. “Hey!”

He ducked, laughing, as she grabbed for the cookies. “You weren’t going to eat them, so I made sure they wouldn’t go to waste!”

“Oh, whatever,” she said, opening the door. “Let’s just go.” She brushed by him, nose in the air. He followed, grinning. They were halfway down the hall when she spun around smartly and snatched the food out of his hand.

“Hey!”

“You shouldn’t steal, someone might want revenge,” she chided, her mouth full. She winked at him. “You weren’t eating them, after all.”

“You little –”

“YO!”

Black*Star was leaning into the building, holding the door open to stare inside. He waved vigorously at them. “GET A MOVE ON!”

Behind him, Tsubaki gave them an apologetic grimace.

“We were two minutes late, chill,” Soul remarked. He fistbumped his friend on the way past him anyways, and gave a nod to the others gathered on the sidewalk outside. “Hey, Crona. The cookies were great.”

They lit up. “I’m glad you liked them!”

“What were you guys even doing to be late?” Liz asked, raising an eyebrow. “I thought we didn’t have any homework this weekend.”

Soul shrugged. Maka smiled.

“Oh, just some cleaning.”

**Author's Note:**

> So yeah this is literally just a fic about them cleaning their apartment. With some character things thrown in. :P


End file.
